We are pleased to present The Bone Folder, by
Ernst Collin as the 2012 Book Arts Web Bind-O-Rama. This year's
event will be a set book affair with participants being asked to
bind the same text.

Translated by Peter D. Verheyen as The Bone Folder,
Der Pressbengel (1922), is Collin’s best-known work, and
first republished in 1984 by the Mandragora Verlag and later translated
into Italian as Dal Religatore d’Arte (1996). Conceived
as a dialogue between a bibliophile and a master bookbinder on all aspects
of the bookbinding craft as well as specific techniques, the original
German has a charming if somewhat pedantically formal “school primer”
tone, in keeping with the time in which it was written. The question-and-answer
format has long history in pedagogical texts, whether for religious catechisms
or trades, as in Friedrich Friese’s Ceremoniel der Buchbinder
(1712), which introduces the reader to all aspects of the bookbinding
trade and its traditions.

Throughout the work, Collin himself is very frank in addressing the conflicts
between quality and cost, as well as the positive and negative impacts
of “machines” throughout the work. In his introduction to
the 1984 reprint of Der Pressbengel, Gustav Moessner, author
of and contributor to several German bookbinding texts, states that he
sees the Collin’s work in part as a reaction to the growing industrialization
of the bookbinding trade and the loss of the skills and techniques connected
with this industrialization. In many respects this trajectory continues
today, accelerated by the decrease in formal bookbinding apprenticeship
opportunities, the increasing simplification of structures, changing aesthetics,
and ultimately changes in the perceived value of books and the general
economic climate of Weimar Germany.

The text can be downloaded
in PDF form, laid out in 7 signatures of 8 pages (sample
pages below) each from the Pressbengel
Project from the left menu on that page. Bindings can reflect
the typical German trade and fine binding styles described in the text,
those of other national traditions, or innovative interpretations of these
traditional styles. Tutorials to structures in the German tradition can
be found here.